


Beauty Bonding

by DisappointedSpaceDad (ShipThePuppy)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Bond Your Hearts Out, Epically slow, Friendship: The Fanfiction, Gen, Lance/Moisturizer is probably the real OTP here, Like, Lip Art, M/M, Short Chapters, Slow burn Klance, The romance is highly background
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-06
Updated: 2017-05-14
Packaged: 2018-08-13 11:22:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7975021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShipThePuppy/pseuds/DisappointedSpaceDad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It started because of one tragic realization.</p><p>Lance was out of moisturizer. </p><p>*<br/>In which Lance's beauty regimen kicks off a whole lot of team bonding, and beautiful things of all sorts have a tendency to bring people together. </p><p>(A story told in short 500-2,000 word chapters.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Moisturizer

**Author's Note:**

> This started because I felt a need for Lance and Allura to become bros so here we go.

It started because of one tragic realization.

Lance was out of moisturizer. The palm-sized green bottle gave a few pitiful wheezes when he squeezed it. He snapped the cap shut and tried pounding it on the heel of his hand, and succeeded in getting just enough to do his face if he was stingy.

He did so, dabbing it at the creases by his mouth, under his eyes, across the T-zone. He rubbed it in using circular motions with the tips of his fingers, just as his mother did it, just as his older brother did it, just as his multitude of sisters did it. Finished, he set the (oh-so empty) bottle down on the edge of the sink.

Lance leaned on his palms as he stared at himself in the mirror. There were a lot of things Lance could handle. Food goo. A limited wardrobe. No internet. _Keith_. Lack of twin hugs. (That last one was handled by an aggressive regimen of _not thinking about it_.)

But in order to continue handling those things, he needed something on this Space Adventure With No Foreseeable End to give back a little. The ship being able to sync up with his phone and copy all his music into a database he could access on a wall panel in his room was a start. He definitely enjoyed being able to shake his booty in privacy.

This, however, was a goddamn travesty. If the universe wanted him to help save it, he needed moisturizer. How could he fight the Galra with dry skin? Nope. No no no no no no _nope._ Unacceptable.

Lance crossed his arms, pouting in the mirror as he reviewed his options. He doubted any of his fellow Paladins had been carrying moisturizer with them when they went on their crazy lion ride in Blue back on Earth—not everyone had the foresight to keep a travel bottle in their jacket pocket like he did. Heck, they hadn’t even thought to carry their phones like he did. (Lance strongly suspected Shiro might have had some sort of eyeliner pen on him. The man had perfect wings on the corner of his eyes, and Lance called bullshit on those being natural.)

Which left him with two options. Coran and Allura. Seeing as Coran would be more helpful if his problem included facial hair, Lance ruled him out. Which left Allura.

Lance squinted. Allura, as naturally gorgeous as she was, had to have some sort of beauty routine. No way she didn’t use _something_ to retain that lovely glow in her skin. And maybe a nail file too. That girl’s nails were fuckin’ _fantastic._

Nodding to himself, Lance exited the bathroom to change out of his robe. If he wanted Allura to share her moisturizer goods, he’d have to be extra convincing.

Time to lay on that McClain charm.

*****

“Heeeeey there, Princess.” Lance leaned casually on the center console, chin propped on his hand. “What are you up to?”

Allura spared him an unimpressed glance. She waved her hand and the hologram projected before her rapidly shifted, star systems flashing by before focusing on a particular one. “Charting out our next movements to stay ahead of Zarkon. Shouldn’t you be in the training room?”

“Come on, you know it isn’t healthy to spend _all_ of our time training.” Lance waved his hand. “Gotta give the body time to rest.” He gestured to himself in a sweeping up-and-down motion, as though to say, _like **this** glorious body._

“Point noted.” Allura brought her fist to her mouth as she looked closer at the hologram. “And is there a reason you’ve chosen to direct your poor flirting at me for the moment?”

Lance gasped indignantly. Poor?! He was a _master_ of flirtation! “Well ex- _cuse_ me, Princess! I didn’t think I needed a reason to bask in your lovely presence.”

Allura turned and raised a single eyebrow almost condescendingly slowly. “Lance.”

He huffed. “Fine.” Lance flopped his upper body over the console. “I need your help.”

“You’re lucky that’s turned off,” she muttered, but her blank expression warmed into a small smile. “What do you need?”

“You wouldn’t happen to have any moisturizer, do you?”

“Moisturizer?” Lance pulled the empty bottle from his pocket and handed it to her. Allura looked it over, popping the cap and sniffing. “Oh, is this hydration cream?”

“All the similarities between our languages and moisturizer isn’t one of them. I call shenanigans.” Lance clasped his hands under his chin. “So, _do_ you have any?”

Allura took another sniff. “What a pleasing scent. Yes, I do have some, but mine has a more floral fragrance than this.”

Lance bounced forward, his entire visage bright. “Then, can I borrow some? That was the only bottle I had and I ran out today.”

“It couldn’t hurt.” With a motion, Allura shut off the hologram. “Come with me.”

It occurred to Lance as Allura led him to a portion of the castle he hadn’t entered that he’d never been in Allura’s room. _None_ of them had. Larger than theirs, it was clearly meant for someone of importance. The large, circular bed was enough to be envious of without considering the décor.

“Wait here.” She stepped into a side room—bathroom, Lance guessed—and left him to mill around. Lance tried to distract himself by looking over the artwork on the walls, or the (actually very pretty) art pieces of colorful blown glass, but his attention kept getting drawn back to the bed.

It wasn’t just a bed. It was the kind of bed he’d only _dreamed_ of as a child. First, it was _round_. Everyone knew the coolest people had round beds.

Second, that canopy. When he was little his twin insisted on getting one, and his mom found one that hung from the ceiling. They tore a few holes in it after a couple years and got tangled more than once, but Lance had come to love that canopy. When they got too old to share a bed, Lance let his twin keep the canopy while he littered his side of the ceiling with glow in the dark stars.

Third, those had to be the fluffiest pillows he’d ever seen. He wanted to dive into them and squeeze as tight as he could like that oversized Roswell plush he’d carted around until he was fourteen.

Last, and this was probably the most important, he could tell that if he jumped on it, it would have the most _perfect_ bounce.

Allura returned just as Lance approached it, fists clenched at his sides. “Here we are, I knew I had a spare jar in there somewhere—”

“Allura, don’t take this the wrong way,” Lance said, “but I’m gonna jump on your bed.”

“Wait, no, why--?”

“ _ToolateI’mdoingit.”_

Lance sprung onto the mattress with a glorious _whoop!_ It barely creaked beneath his feet, bouncing him in the air. Ooooh, he’d definitely been right.

“ _What_ are you doing?” Allura set a jar down and rushed to the bed, looking torn between confusion and annoyance.

“You can not tell me you’ve never done this.”

“Why would I have?”

“Oh my quiznack, Allura.” Lance waved her forward. “Come on, get up here.”

She crossed her arms. “Lance, this seems very childish.”

“And _you_ seem very boring.” At the frown that got him, Lance amended. “No, wait, sorry, I don’t mean it like that. I just think you’d have fun if you try it.”

Allura’s lips pursed, her gaze flicking between the mattress and Lance’s face. “I don’t know…”

Lance took up a chant of, “Do it! Do it! Do it!”

“Oh, alright.” Lance cheered as Allura climbed on, taking a few experimental hops. A grin pulled at her lips.

“There you go!” Lance grasped her hands, and pulled her with him in bigger jumps.

After her first big bounce, a startled laugh burst from her mouth. They both laughed and darted around the bed, teeth displayed in huge smiles. They playfully shoved one another for a while, until Lance crossed his legs mid-air and let himself bounce to a stop in the middle of the bed. Allura collapsed beside him.

“See? Told you it was fun.”

Allura sat up. “Alright, alright. You were right.” She raised her knee to lean on it. “Lance?”

“Yeah?”

“Why do you flirt with me so much?”

“Because you’re gorgeous and I’m in love with you?” Allura gave him the same eyebrow-raised look from earlier. “Okay, okay. So I’m not in love with you. But I did have a crush on you!”

“If you don’t any longer, then why continue?”

Lance shrugged. “Habit, I guess? I’m just sort of a natural flirt. My mom always said it would either get me kissed or punched.”

“Well, she was certainly right about that. I’ve wanted to punch you a few times.”

“Hey!” Lance stretched his legs out and rested back on his palms. “But seriously, if it makes you uncomfortable, I can stop. Just say the word.”

Allura shook her head. “Maybe tone it down a little bit, but you don’t have to stop. I’ve gotten used to it by now, and I don’t think I’m the only one who finds it amusing.”

“Sweet.” Lance scooched off the bed. “So, where’s that Altean-brand moisturizer you promised?”

Allura followed him off (in a move much too graceful to be called a scooch), and retrieved the wide, ovular jar. “Here you are!”

Lance twisted the lid off and took a sniff. A sweet, light floral, the moisturizer itself was a faint pink. He rubbed a bit between his fingers. He’d always been wary of putting anything strongly scented on his face, but this stuff was faint enough that he wasn’t worried. And no doubt it’d do wonders for his hands. They already felt softer, even with that small amount.

“You have no idea how glad I am.” Lance recapped the jar. “I thought I was gonna have to suffer with dry, flaky skin forever.”

“It’s no problem. It’s relatively simple to make, seeing it’s largely water based. The hardest part’s getting ingredients for the scent. Tell me, what was the fragrance of the cream you were using?”

“Aloe,” Lance replied. “It’s a plant back home that’s got a ton of uses. My mom grew one in the windowsill. You could put the juice on sunburns, make drinks out of it, all kinds of stuff.”

“We’ll have to see if we find anything similar in our travels. I’d like to recreate it.”

Lance flashed a quick salute. “I’ll be on lookout.”

Allura and Lance walked back to the control room in a strange, companionable silence. Lance passed the jar from palm to palm, thinking carefully. As Allura stepped back to her previous position and pulled up the hologram, Lance rocked on his heels.

“You know,” Lance drawled, “you and I haven’t really talked like this much. Maybe we should do it again. You and me. Hangin’ out.”

“Hm.” Allura tapped her chin as though she had to consider it, but the way she smiled gave her away. “I can agree to that.”

“Awesome! We can swap beauty tips. I’ll find some space cucumbers somewhere and put them on your eyes and tell you stories. It’ll be great!”

Allura blinked. “While that sounds odd, I’m happy to agree. How about once we get the castle moved tomorrow, _after your training_ , you come meet me by my room and we can talk until dinner?”

“Perfect, it’s a date!”

“ _Lance.”_

“A perfectly non-romantic, friendly date!”

“Better.”


	2. Lip-Color/Lipstick

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woo, been awhile, but this part was also longer than I expected it to be. So yay! Expect things to come quicker now that I've got some establishment out there and I can do shorter chapters.

For the first several weeks, it could be said that nothing had changed. Training continued, battles commenced, and the Paladins of Voltron took slow, plodding steps closer to defeating Zarkon. (Rebellions all tended to start like that. With whispers and hushed declarations. Then they got bigger. Small acts of defiance sprout from the ground like weeds. You focus on the biggest one, and forget to pay attention to the little ones. Let Zarkon focus his attentions on Voltron, and one day he’d turn around find that while his back was turned his garden of universal domination had been overrun with weeds everywhere they’d been. They just had to show up, and let the whispers take hold. It’d be hard to take back a garden of thousands of weeds and one giant robot.)

(Lance never claimed to be good at metaphors.)

Point was, as far as Lance was concerned, things had moved along quite the same. He and Allura were a little closer, which was nice! And if Lance flirted a little less and Allura looked like she wanted to throttle him on fewer occasions, no one said anything. Honestly, he didn’t think anyone had noticed.

He'd been spending more time in her room lately, usually before dinner. They traded stories and Allura shared her facial masks. She had the _good_ stuff. He peeled that off and his entire face felt like a baby butt. Allura’d given him an odd look when he mentioned it, but hey, she was an only child. Lance had three little sisters and at least five younger cousins. In a family as big as his, you helped with diaper changes.

They were on a newly liberated planet when Allura and Lance Time began taking steps to turn into Group Bonding Time.

Lance had taken to calling the planet Mearth in his head, because for all intents and purposes it had similar biomes and oceans as Earth, but startlingly red soil like Mars. Also, he had no idea how to pronounce its actual title. The Universal Translator psychically installed in their brains via mystical lion only went so far.

The people of Mearth all had very large eyes with pretty colors and thick eyelashes. They only seemed fragile, all thin bodies and long limbs, but beneath the skin they boasted muscle and bones like steel rods.

They also had the prettiest lips Lance had ever seen. Plush lips, apparently, were a commonly inherited trait amongst them. But the perfect shape and fullness wasn’t what did Lance in—it was the _colors_. Painted all sorts of shades using brushes and small pots of vivid creams Lance associated as a form of lipstick.

Before leaving the planet, the native people insisted that the Voltron team stay to join in their celebration of Galra liberation. Which was how the team ended up split among the populace in a large, open field outside the town, helping set up for the festivities. Lance was naturally drawn toward a group that was arranging a table of the colorful lip-creams.

“Hi!” He waggled the fingers of his right hand in greeting, tilting forward on his heels as he tucked the other hand behind his back. He blinked coquettishly with a smile. “Any possibility I could help?”

A male-looking Mearthian waved him closer eagerly. “Of course! Here, if you don’t mind arranging these by color groups…”

Lance took up the task easily, sorting the pots into clusters of green, red, blue, and so on. He admired a particular shade of blue that matched his armor.

“Would you like to try it?”

Lance startled, nearly dropping the pot. Luckily the lip-color was thick, and didn’t spill over the side. He turned to the person he’d spoken to previously. “Who? Me? I dunno, my mouth isn’t really full enough to pull off this color.” He sucked his bottom lip between his teeth self-consciously. Still, the idea wasn’t _un_ appealing.

The Mearthian looked him over knowlingly with big, topaz-colored eyes. His pastel-green lips spread into a grin. “I think you should try it, Blue Paladin. Once the festival starts, I’d be happy to put it on you myself.”

Lance drummed his fingers on the pot. Well, it couldn’t hurt. And if anyone laughed at him, he could just pass it off as a joke. “Okay.”

“Splendid!” The Mearthian clapped his hands. “I am Rakkan. Come here after the music starts.”

“Sure thing,” he agreed.

Setup finished around sunset, and by then Lance had wandered to help a few other tables with preparations. Poles dug into the earth at various intervals in the clearing, clustered on top with a bushel of brightly glowing organic bulbs that grew brighter as night came. Musicians with stringed instruments and drums gathered in the center, all of them starting up some universal beat they all knew by heart.

Lance found his way back to the table, and found it crowded with Mearthians. Their usual display of lip-colors was given embellishments. One featured red outlined with shimmering gold, another had a silver crescent moon curved into their cupid’s bow on a bed of white, still another a gorgeous budding of purple flowers.

“Blue Paladin!” Rakkan spotted him. Lance approached, his eyes darting from one display to the next. “What do you think? Want to try after all?”

Lance’s head whipped around. “ _Yes please._ ”

Rakkan sat him down, and after asking for a design preference, begin the meticulous work of painting on the lip-color with thin brushes. Occasionally Rakkan’s hand tilted his face this way and that, the warmth of the touch spreading a laxness to his shoulders. Lance’s eyes drifted shut.

 _(“I like that we have the same face, Lance. It means I can test colors on you._ ”)

“Done!” Lance blinked and was suddenly face-to-face with a mirror. “What do you think?”

His lips were blue. A blue like his lion, and a few shades lighter, as the color blended along his bottom lip to his top, where a gentle touch of white had been applied to the bow. It looked like an ocean wave.

“I love it,” he said, softly. Then louder, “I love it!”

He hopped out of his seat and wrapped Rakkan in a hug. “Oh my gosh you’re so awesome, Rakkan. Seriously. Wait!” He pulled back, holding Rakkan by his shoulders. “Do you think you could do this for my friends, too?”

Rakkan, startled, took a moment to regain his bearings before nodding. “Of course, Blue Paladin.”

Lance smiled wide. “Call me Lance, and thanks! I’ll be right back.”

He dashed off through the crowd.

*****

“Isn’t it a little childish?”

“It isn’t to them.” Lance waved his arm to encompass the entirety of the festival. “Besides, just think of it like face painting. And you’re never too old for face painting, Keith.”

Keith grumbled, crossing his arms. Hunk sat patiently still as Rakkan drew his brush across his lips. Allura, Pidge, Coran, and Shiro had already finished, and admired one another’s designs.

Allura’s lips were painted pastel pink and lilac, soft white clouds drifting across a gentle sky. Pidge had gone for a pattern of geometric shapes in earthy green and thin lines of black. Coran offset his mustache with stripes of white and orange. Shiro carried a galaxy on his lips, black with misty clusters of color and dots of bright white.

Currently, Rakkan was working on painting a sun at the corner of Hunk’s mouth, which faded into a gradient of yellow and dusky orange.

“You know what you’re gonna get, Keith?” Lance nudged his shoulder.

Keith shrugged, his attention fixed on Hunk and Rakkan. “I don’t know. Probably just red.”

“Come on, Keith.” Shiro stepped up beside them. “Why don’t you try something a little extravagant?”

Keith looked at him from the corner of his eye. “Why don’t I tell everyone this isn’t the first time you’ve worn black lipstick?”

Shiro clamped his mouth shut, and turned on his heel.

“Woah, wait, what?” Lance darted after him. “You’ve worn black lipstick?”

“I was sixteen.”

“ _You had a goth phase!”_

_“I was sixteen, Lance.”_

Lance spent several minutes prodding Shiro for more information, but he kept sternly quiet about it. Not even Pidge ganging up on him with Lance got him to spill. By the time his attention shifted back to Rakkan, Hunk was already done and watching Keith get his turn.

“Ooooh,” Lance sang, draping himself over Hunk. “What’s he getting?”

“No idea,” Hunk whispered. “He was being quiet about it when Rakkan asked.”

Luckily it didn’t take long to find out. Keith finished the fastest, only letting everyone else see once he’d checked himself in the mirror first. Rakkan had painted Keith’s lips a startling crimson, with only a single flower on the bottom corner of his lower lip in a darker shade of red. Whatever the flower was, it made Lance think of a rose.

“Wow,” Lance breathed. With his dark hair and pale skin, the red of Keith’s lips reminded him of old Hollywood starlets and those long cigarettes people held daintily between two fingers in black and white movies. Classically beautiful.

Keith’s face twisted into a grimace as his cheeks flushed. “What?”

Lance shook his head rapidly as Hunk gave him a long look with raised eyebrows. “Nothing, jeez, Keith. Not everything’s an insult. You look,” he paused, “good. It’s a nice color on you.”

Some of the tenseness eased from Keith’s stance. “Um. Thanks.”

“No prob.”

An awkward silence hovered for a moment before they were joined by the rest of the group. As his fellow team complimented Keith on his design, Lance hung back with Rakkan.

“Hey, Rakkan?”

“Yes, Lance?”

“Would it be possible to get my hands on some of those pots to take with me before I go?”

Rakkan nodded. “I’d be happy to set some aside for you.”

“Thanks, man. I appreciate it.”

Lance bounded back to group after promising to pick them up later. “Last one on the dance floor cleans the healing pods this week!”

With a squawk Pidge gave chase, Hunk and Keith close on their heels.

*****

Lance ended up cleaning the healing pods that week (because Pidge was a dirty, dirty cheater), but it was worth it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up: Lance gets to the bottom of Shiro's eyeliner once and for all.


End file.
